Carbon Footprint

Congratulations, USA – another dirty, bloody regime-change proxy war down the crapper.

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This Is Your Brain On Jeff Sessions

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, The Donald's nominee for Attorney General, is known for some pretty Neanderthal positions on civil liberties issues, but none are quite as knuckle-dragging as his creaky, shopworn, 1980s "Just Say No Club" position on marijuana. This, despite at least half the states in the country having some form of decriminalization or legalization for medical and recreational use.

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#SmokeSessions Returns to #ShowSessions

#ShowSessions on Capitol Hill, Dec 08 2016 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

Like MacArthur, they said they'd return, and they did. As advertised, the "Russell Building Posse" paid a repeat visit to the office of Senator and AG nominee Jeff Sessions to "show'n'tell" his media director the plant and people he railed against with his "good people" remarks about marijuana.

"Smoke Sessions" hits Capitol Hill

And so it was that activists from the DC Cannabis Coalition convened at the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Trump's nominee for Attorney General, to discuss the Senator's recent remarks that "good people don't smoke marijuana"...

Bad People: An Infographic

"Good people don't smoke marijuana."
– Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL, Trump AG nominee

So, roughly speaking, that'd be maybe 60 million people in at least half the states in the country that voted for the decriminalization or legalization of cannabis for recreational and/or medical use? Wow, that's a whole lot of bad people, Senator.

From the latest at dcmj.org:

Donald Trump has tapped one of the biggest prohibitionists in Congress to be the Attorney General of the United States: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. Earlier this year the Alabama Senator said “good people don’t smoke marijuana,” and while we don’t know yet if he’ll respect states rights (or DC’s rights since we are not a state) or if he’ll do what John Ashcroft did as George W. Bush’s Attorney General: raid lawful cannabis grows, raid lawful dispensaries, and even go so far as crack down on paraphernalia vendors. Let’s not forget why Tommy Chong went to jail...

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Viva La Resistance!

After running the most piss-poor campaign ever with the most godawful candidate ever and saddling us with a fascist real-estate huckster, what do the Democrats and Liberal America respond with? A suggestion that we wear safety pins as a sign of "resistance" and solidarity with the Muslims who will be persecuted and the immigrants about to be deported en masse. That's it. That's all they've got for us.

So, it's looking like the safety pin is about to replace the AIDS Awareness Ribbon as the go-to empty gesture for milquetoast Liberals and Hollywood asshats.

I'm serious. Just you wait. I'll lay you better than even money that on Oscar Night next year, the red carpet will be infested with showbiz doorknobs wearing 24k gold safety pins on their tuxedoes and gowns.

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The Democrats' Baggage

True to classic form, the Democratic Party is desperately looking for somebody to blame -- anybody but itself -- for Tuesday's Presidential catastrophe. Never mind the hopeless load of their own baggage they were schlepping around through the entire campaign -- and this pile ain't gonna fit in any overhead bin, either.

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Shut Up And Leave Me Alone

Because I'm so sick of smarmy editorial cartoons with Miss Liberty voting in them, a version more accurately portraying the current national mood.

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Don't Blame Me, I Didn't Vote

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Mobilize for Global Ponies!

Well, my bud Adam has come out for Hillary, so I suppose I oughta get off my butt and endorse somebody too -- finally.

This parody of my old World Bank "A16" art is my contribution to an upcoming book by perennial insurgent candidate Vermin Supreme. Who here doesn't love a pony?

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Catharsis 2016: Our Journey Home

Soon it'll be time for our second Catharsis On The Mall, a gathering for compassion and healing, featuring art, speakers, music, and storytelling, culminating in the "temple burn" ceremony, the only such event officially permitted on the Mall.

Here's the details, from the Catharsis Web site:

Catharsis on the Mall’s 2016 art theme is dedicated to those who have experienced traumatic stress and their journey home.



We experience traumatic events that displace our mind, fracture our lives, and violate our perceptions. One moment can cause such upheaval, that it might seem impossible to return to that safe place we once knew. When our lives are ripped asunder, and we are left to pick up the pieces and stitch them back together, the struggle to recenter and find yourself feels insurmountable.



Traumatic stress was written of in 760 BCE by the Greek poet Homer, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and studied by the historian Herodotus in 490 BCE. It has been present in every war ever fought. It has been present in every community that experiences rape, brutality, oppression, and systematic violence. Violence and disaster can have lasting impacts on body and mind...



...We gather to celebrate wellness and reintegration. We gather for art and community. We gather to shake free from the stigmas of surviving. We gather to honor and support those who travel this road alongside us. We gather to end the silent suffering of millions. We are on the journey home together.

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March Of The Clones

"March Of The Clones" Washington DC 09.24.16 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

This past Saturday saw yet another smoking protest at the White House, calling on President Sparkle Pony to deschedule cannabis from the DEA's schedule of narcotics and dangerous substances. This week's protest had a Star Wars theme, "March Of The Clones", and also used the famous Han Solo Carbonite Freeze scene from Return Of The Jedi as an analogy for Obama's continued inaction on cannabis scheduling.

Stronger Together

Hillary Clinton's recent collapse at a Nineleven™ anniversary ceremony -- with all the obligatory Clinton campaign spin, dissembling and lies -- has given a whole new meaning to the Democratic Party's campaign slogan, "Stronger Together".

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Smashing Blackberries

When I picked up the morning Post off my front stoop last Tuesday morning and got a look at the front page, I knew this was arguably one of their most sublimely insulting headlines ever. Here was the Ice Queen obviously destroying evidence under investigation -- along with other actions that would result in immediate firing and imprisonment for people who aren't Hillary Clinton -- and the Washington Post is queefing out yet another blast of tired old 1950s red-baiting and dick-wagging, continuing to aid Clinton and the Democrats' ongoing deflection of blame and claims of victimhood.

After over a year of Hillary and the Democrats' lies, half-truths, primary rigging, thievery, bullying, threats and insults, the Washington Post still insists that it's the Russians -- the goddamn' Russians -- who are responsible for the loss of faith and trust in the American electoral process. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't need the Russians' help to lose my trust in American "democracy".

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Police vs. Cannabis: an Infographic

Ignore the anti-legalization shrieking and propaganda, and consider this little factoid: Police have murdered 765 people in the US this year – so far. Meanwhile, absolutely 0 – count 'em, ZERO – people worldwide have died as a direct result of smoking cannabis through all of recorded history.

That's right, smoking cannabis will not kill you – unless you do it in front of a moving bus. See you in DC on September 24!

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Return Of The Choom

Inspired by a scene from Return Of The Jedi in which Han Solo is frozen in carbonite in Jabba's lair, this poster announces a new round of cannabis legalization protest in Washington, DC and the White House on September 24, and calls on the DEA to "release the #Choom" -- to deschedule cannabis and free all prisoners being held for marijuana "crimes".

Needless to say, there's a lot of discontent boiling in the cannabis activist community about the DEA dragging its feet and stringing everybody along for months before finally blowing us off and refusing to remove cannabis from its "Schedule 1" list, alongside heroin. Much of the criticism is also directed at President Sparkle Pony, who claimed he would let science dictate policy and not politics, but has consistently chosen to support the failed Drug War policies which have their roots in the Nixon Administration. (The joke going around the DCMJ office is that the DEA has Obama "frozen, like Han Solo"; the term "choom" refers to Obama's weed-smoking posse from school, nicknamed the "Choom Gang".)

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Broken Windows

Just a couple of nights ago, yet another black youth was killed by police in America -- this time in Milwaukee, touching off a night of rioting which featured the burning of a gas station and the smashing of windows on businesses and cop cars. And as usual, White America and the Boss Media were getting their panties in a twist more about broken windows than human lives.

For those of you who've been living in caves since the 1990s, "Broken Windows" has been a policing institution gifted to us by the likes of Rudolph Giuliani in New York City. Basically a pretext for the establishment of paramilitary police occupations of the poorest -- and blackest -- areas, it was such a hit that "Broken Windows" opened up franchises in pretty much every city in the US, spreading its brand of harassment, profiling, intimidation and brutality.

After observing this form of right-wing "folk wisdom" in action for over twenty years, I can't help but ask: whose windows are really being broken here?

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Sorta-Sponsored Post

Back about a month ago, Capitol Hemp was inundated in the Great Bongwater Flood Of 2016. After about a week's worth of bailing, vacuuming and clean-up, the shop was back in business.

Gold Star Mother

So, about a week or so ago, The Donald queefed out yet another classic Tourette's outburst about how he "sacrificed" during the Iraq War by "employing thousands and thousands of people" in response to remarks at the Democratic Convention by Khizr Khan, father of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, killed in Iraq in 2004, about how The Donald "sacrificed nothing" for his country.

The Democrats, always on the lookout for an issue to exploit, started up a good old-fashioned flag-waving contest, yelling to anyone who'd listen about patriotism and sacrifice. Gotta give 'em credit, though; they managed to find the perfect non-issue to distract the media from all the leaks of DNC emails detailing their campaign of fraud and deception against Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. And it's always good to see that Liberals love Muslims -- as long as they're willing to die for the Empire.

And speaking of sacrifice, I'm guessing Chelsea was too busy studying to become a hedge fund manager to do any sacrificing.

Jacket and M4 Carbine Ensemble by Giorgio Armani, $100b.

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#DNCleaks

At last report, there is absolute zero evidence that the Russians had squat to do with the recent Wikileaks dump of Democratic National Committee emails detailing the program of fraud and sabotage against the Sanders campaign. Still, that hasn't stopped all manner of Liberal Democratic mouthpieces like MSNBC shrieking at full throat about how "the Russians did it".

Actually, I think it's too bad that the Russians didn't do it, because ma-aan, would that have been some poetic justice.

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As Seen On TV!

Shortly after Ron Douglas' documentary dropped, RT America's Lindsay France invited me onto her program FishTank, which covers electoral politics and elections. The interview aired June 30 and I'd planned to post this link here earlier, except a bunch of other stuff happened.

But, now that the dust has settled -- just a bit -- here's my interview with Lindsay on RT America's FishTank.






Total Running Time: 06:16

See more FishTank episodes on YouTube.

Follow Lindsay France and RT America on Twitter.

Nice Shooting!

If you've noticed, in the past few years, that the behavior and tactics of American police resemble those of Israeli police and soldiers, you'd be right -- and these tactics have come into even sharper focus with the murder of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Minneapolis, Minnesota recently.

Military occupation tactics, collective punishment, terrorizing and brutalizing neighborhoods, shooting kids for throwing stones -- filthy, bloody Israel taught U.S. police everything they know.

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"Israel-trained police 'occupy' Missouri after killing of black youth"
Rania Khalek, Electronic Intifada 08.15.14

"From NYC, Ferguson To Baltimore, American Police Are Trained In Apartheid Israel"
Kit O'Connell, MintPress News 05.15.15

"U.S. Police Routinely Travel to Israel to Learn Methods of Brutality and Repression"
Justin Gardner, Free Thought Project 08.30.15

#NoDARKAct

The so-called "DARK Act", working its way through the US Senate, is a pro-corporate bill full of loopholes disguised as a GMO labeling bill which, in fact, hides GMO information behind QR codes and toll-free telephone numbers.

Prior to the Senate vote yesterday, my long-time comrade Adam Eidinger and his pals from the Organic Consumers Association protested the influence of Monsanto in the Senate by flinging money -- yep, that's right, $2000 in real cash money -- onto the floor of the Senate.

Find out more about the DARK Act at the Organic Consumers Association.

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Flugennock, the Documentary

Total running time: 19:19
Music by: Rations and Utter Failure on 86'd Records

Ron Douglas, producer of this documentary, is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia Communications at Wesley College, Delaware; he was a student activist involved in the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the century (this one) and became a fan of my work while wheatpasting my posters for the 2000 Spring IMF/World Bank mobilization.

Fast-forward 15 years -- Ron has become an accomplished filmmaker and documentarian, producing films about police brutality, and about Native American boarding schools in the US and Canada. Last summer, he contacted me about being the subject in one of a series of documentaries on the emergence of citizen journalism on the Internet, and specifically the creation of the Independent Media Centers across the US and the world in the wake of the Seattle WTO mobilization of 1999, and the "A16" mobilization at the IMF and World Bank in the spring of 2000.

This film provides a brief history of my cartoon work going back to the Yipster Times in the late 1970s, and my art and media activist involvement with the antiglobalization and antiwar movements of the '00s, and my work with the DC Statehood and marijuana legalization campaign of 2014.

You can follow Ron Douglas on Twitter at @alchemicalmedia, and check out more of his documentary work on YouTube here.

Pretty Vacant

"There's no point in asking, you'll get no reply...!"

So, yesterday I'm watching and reading the ongoing coverage of the Brexit vote -- watching "Leave" win by something like 4% -- but what really got me going was the discussion of the ripple effect through the rest of Europe, as other countries watched the UK bail and thought "Hell, if the Brits can do it, why not us...?"

It's also worth noting here that the discussion couldn't really be broken down into a strictly either/or division, despite most media trying to forcibly break it down to "good Lefties vote Remain" and "only Rightist Trumpsters vote Leave". I started out buying into that because the mainstream US media were beating the living crap out of that riff, but the more foreign and dissident media I read, the more nuances became evident.

In the end, I think it might be a good thing, and that this might actually work out well for our side, simply because I can't think of a single kind of substantive, revolutionary change that didn't require chaos, tumult and upheaval -- the old "breaking eggs to make an omelet" thing. And man, am I ever hungry for a nice omelet right now.

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He Can't Say "Radical Islam"

Never mind that the stew of motives for the Orlando nightclub mass shooting pretty much includes everything but ISIS. Never mind that the shooter's attachment to ISIS was on the level of a metalhead's allegiance to his favorite band (Dokken RULES!). Once the media got the slightest whiff of an ISIS connection, they and the politicians were on it like a dog with an old shoe, pausing only briefly to pretend to care about gays and lesbians before returning to the ongoing ISISfest – which brings us to Donald "You're Fired" Trump.

Despite the shooter's ISIS connection being weak at best, it didn't stop The Donald from a spasm of self-congratulatory yelling and screaming about ISIS and Muslims and immigrants and kicking Obama's nuts by bitching about Obummer's seeming inability to say the words "radical Islam". Never mind that B.O. has bombed at least seven countries in his term in office, or that he's had this country perpetually at war in the Middle East, or that he hasn't lifted a finger to stop the wave of hate and discrimination against American Muslims -- dude can't say "radical Islam", and maa-aan, has it got The Donald's panties in a twist.

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Delete Your Account

So, anyway, about a week or so ago, Donald Trump had one of his usual bigoted Tourette's outburts on Twitter -- nothing of note, really -- to which the Clinton campaign responded curtly, "Delete your account". Obviously, it wasn't the Ice Queen herself, but some mouthy intern who probably thought she was being all cool and edgy n'stuff.

Delete your account, I thought... was it perhaps really a command to the People to forget everything they know about the Clintons? You know, like:

Delete your account of Hill'n'Bill's excellent adventures in Serbia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan?

Delete your account of Hillary's tenure on the Board Of Directors of Wal-Mart, whose reputation with workers has been in the toilet for years?

Delete your account of Hillary carpetbagging her way into a New York Senate seat, where she accomplished exactly nothing except to build out the infrastructure for a Presidential campaign?

Delete your account of Hillary's support for the Patriot Act, the War On Terror, and the disaster in Iraq?

Delete your account of Hillary's support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement?

Delete your account of Hillary's remarks to the board of Goldman Sachs, for which she received $670,000? An average speech, for Hill, considering how much she and Bubba get per speech on any given speaking tour. Six-seventy large, man -- in some parts of this country, that'd still buy you a house.

That's just a slice of the lies, deceit, betrayal, greed and hypocrisy that Hillary, the DNC, and the aging Liberal establishment would like you to forget, so you can be "united".

Delete your account. Hell, if there's anybody who knows how to work a delete key, it's Hillary Clinton.

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#HesWithUs

So, aaaanyway... Bernie and Obummer met at the White House this week to talk about the future of the Democratic party or someshit, but not before Obummer spewed out a ringing endorsement of the Ice Queen. Russia Today says Bernie's not dropping out, but the Washington Post says he is. Seeing what the Post has queefed out the better part of this year, I'll go with Russia Today on this one.

If you ask me, though, Obummer endorsed Hillary, and then when Bernie showed up, Obummer and the Ice Queen took him around back to the Rose Garden, offed his ass, then dragged him out in front of the cameras when it was time for him to drop that mumbling about how he was going to "work with Clinton against Trump".

Don't forget that he said right from day one that he'd support the Ice Queen if she won the nomination.

Hell, he's not dead; he's just resting. He's pining for the fjords.

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Surge!

This week begins WMATA's SafeTrack "surge" of massive, long-overdue repairs and rebuilding on the Metro subway, plagued over the past year or so with a rash of fires, derailings, and other accidents...

President Trump

So, the last polls I looked at in the If The Election Were Held Today Department had Sanders beating The Donald in the general fairly easily. So, while Hillary may be able to lie, cheat, steal and backstab her way to the nomination, she'll likely be toasted in November. Still, the Hillaroids will no doubt find some twisted, otherworldly reason why it's our fault for not supporting her lying, thieving, imperialist neoliberal ass... because, as we all know, nothing is ever Hillary's fault, right?

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Hail To The Choom

In his high school days in Hawaii, Barack Obama hung out with a circle of friends nicknamed "the Choom Gang" -- "choom" being Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. Almost all the students in this group went on to be entirely productive and successful citizens -- writers, lawyers, businessmen and, of course, President of the United States.

This is by way of reminding everybody out there that cannabis is still listed by the DEA as "Schedule 1", along with meth and heroin, and that Obama could start the descheduling process for marijuana himself instead of passing the buck to Congress. Obama himself is living proof that cannabis should be descheduled; his legacy could only be improved by ending a program of persecution based entirely on the deceptions and racism of Harry Anslinger and Richard Nixon.

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22 A Day

At last report, 22 veterans a day are committing suicide due to depression and other post-traumatic stress. Today, DCMJ and the Weed For Warriors Project threw a Smoke-In and Die-In at Lafayette Square in front of the White House. "Easier access does not equal EQUAL access" said WFW's Brandon Wyatt, an Iraq War veteran and attorney who uses cannabis to heal his PTSD.

"22 A Day" Cannabis Protest for Vets, White House from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

The DEA's Schedule is Nixon's Schedule

The DEA schedule of narcotics -- in which cannabis is classifed alongside heroin -- was a product of the Nixon era, when the modern War On Drugs started cranking up. Tricky Dick himself, on a leaked White House tape, was said to have called marijuana "...the drug of choice of Mexicans, hippies and niggers."

Here's former White House Domestic Affairs Advisor, the notorious John Ehrlichman, with a slightly more nuanced framing of this policy in a 1994 interview:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
--John Ehrlichman, Nixon Domestic Affairs Advisor, 1994

The DEA schedule is Nixon's schedule, part of a policy born out of deception and racism. It's time to DEschedule cannabis.

We'll be at the White House on May 20, how about yourself?

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Weed War is Race War!

The initial decision to criminalize marijuana in 1937 wasn't based on a study of the science and biology of addiction or pharmacology, but purely on politics and racism. Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics -- precursor to today's DEA -- was a notorious racist and liar who based his opinions on marijuana on pure, raw racist stereotypes and who believed that marijuana was a sure gateway to violence, sedition and social discontent. It was Anslinger's inflammatory lies which led to the passage of state marijuana laws as a component of Jim Crow and stoked the hype for propaganda films such as Marihuana: The Devil's Weed and Reefer Madness.

As a follow-up to their wildly epic April 2nd event and their historic meeting with White House representives from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, DCMJ -- the people who brought you legal weed in DC -- are throwing a sequel to April 2 on May 20, the one-month anniversary of 4/20, to highlight the fact that Obama is late on descheduling cannabis, and to remind folks of the racism behind the 1937 marijuana ban which is still a major component of the War On Drugs.

And, here's more of the wit and wisdom of Harry Anslinger...

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Glass Ceiling

When women like Carly Fiorina, Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton break the "glass ceiling", it's because they're standing on the backs of millions of poor and working-class women who are lucky to see the floor.

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He's Late!

Yesterday, following on the heels of a successful "Smoke-In" protest earlier this month, was DCMJ's historic meeting with White House officials from the Office Of National Drug Control Policy concerning the rescheduling or descheduling of marijuana from its current status at Schedule 1 -- listed alongside heroin and methamphetamine. Along with combat veteran Brandon Wyatt of the group "Weed For Warriors", DCMJ leaders Adam Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller spoke to the ONDCP representatives at length on the need for a political -- rather than scientific -- solution to the current cannabis prohibition situation. Citing the racism of Federal Narcotics Bureau Commissioner Harry Anslinger (responsible for the initial Federal ban on cannabis in the 1930s) and, later, President Nixon in the late '60s and early '70s, Eidinger asserted that because cannabis prohibition was a political act, a solution to end prohibition must also be political.

Eidinger and Schiller called for a followup to this meeting at a higher level, a "bud summit" at the White House with El Presidente himself. "He doesn’t even have to say anything," commented Eidinger, "he just needs to listen. Because it’s going to take a year of dialogue at the federal level to figure out federal legalization.”

Listening to a recording of the ONDCP meeting at a "post-mortem" meeting back at the DCMJ office, conversation turned toward the fact that Obama was late in deciding on how to handle Federal legalization; "late for 4/20" was the joke going around the room, and it inspired a literary analogy "hook" on which to hang a "hashtag point" -- #HesLate -- and this cartoon.

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Gentlemen Prefer Hillary

Economic justice seems so sentimental,
but Wall Street is a girl's best friend --

15 an hour is so detrimental,
when Wall Street is a girl's best friend...!

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Overheard at #DemocracySpring

Ahh, Democracy Spring -- that time when a young activist's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of mindlessly lining up for a meaningless, symbolic, ceremonial civil disobedience at the Capitol which does absolutely nada to change the status quo of American politics.

At last report, the Democracy Spring "production" was well on its way to hitting its goal of 3500 civil disobedience arrests at the Capitol -- and they really are into yelling about how they're breaking the record for CD arrests at the Capitol, almost to the point of fetishizing. At a $50 fine for each arrest, Democracy Spring is fattening up the US Capitol Police coffers to the tune of $175k -- especially given that, if on-the-ground accounts are to be believed, many of the Democracy Springers are getting back in line to be arrested again after being taken around the back of the Capitol to be cited, fines paid, and released.

Well, shut my mouth -- looks like nonviolent civil disobedience really does work... sorta kinda.

#WitchHillary

For a few weeks or so earlier this year, MSNBC was running a network promo with this clip of Hillary Clinton speaking, and it had to be the nastiest sounding stuff I'd heard her spew out in years. Hillary's voice sounded raspy, raw, shrieking like a pissed-off junior high school principal, a voice that could cut glass. You could tell she was trying to sound all forceful and dynamic and Presidential n'shit, but instead all I could think of was the Wicked Witch Of The West. With that raspy shrieky voice, all Hillary needed was a big pointy hat and a broom.

No doubt buttloads of old-skool 1970s feminist language cops will get on my case for comparing Hillary to the WWotW, but, hey... if the shoe fits, strap that motherfucker on.

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Decision 2016

Y'know, if any of the shenanigans being reported in the US Presidential primaries -- especially on the Democratic side -- were going on in any other country, the UN would be so totally up in their shit in a New York minute, man.

Check out this and more at @ElectionBoycott and at #ArizonaElectionFraud.

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#deschedule420

#deschedule420 the White House 04.02.16 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.
-------



TUUULLLIIIIIPPSS will make you SLEEEEEEEEEEP.

#reschedule420

We're moving 420 to 4/2 because Obama has been a big, fat ZERO on cannabis rescheduling!

So, join us at the White House on April 2 at 2pm for an afternoon of truth, fun and protest. Get more info at dcmj.org or follow DCMJ on Twitter.

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Bird-doggin'

"Bird-dogging" at Rep. Andy Harris fundraiser, 02.16.16 from Mike Flugennock on Vimeo.

This past Tuesday, I joined the DCMJ Posse on a trip up the highway to Bel Air, Maryland, in the state's 1st Congressional District, represented by one Andy Harris. Most of you will remember Andy as the Congressman who tried to overturn the results of the DC referendum which enacted Proposition 71, which legalized the private use, possession and growing of marijuana.

Blast From My Past: Summer '78

A few weeks ago my "baby sister" (now 51) finally finished straightening out our late mother's estate and got the house sold. The Sunday after we signed off on the sale, Sis and I met up out at Mom's house to grab a last few things we wanted to save before the Salvation Army guys cleared the place out.

It turns out my sister had found and put aside for me a couple of boxes filled with old reprints of my high school and college newspaper cartoons and old studio class sketchbooks from my senior year of college. Among the sketchbooks was one nearly half full of old comic strips and cartoons I'd done for Outlaws, the old DC Yippie 'zine, the summer after the notorious 1978 White House Smoke-In -- work I thought had been lost forever.

I was surprised at how little I winced as I flipped through the sketchbooks. Granted, the gags are rather obscure and unarguably dated, but technically the work itself still actually holds up rather well.

Raging Cow

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Valentine's Day 2017?

This past week, the DC City Council voted to create a Task Force to develop recommendations on how the District of Columbia should go forward with social cannabis use. In the roughly 4 months the Task Force has to complete its work, it will study issues such as the health and safety of staff and customers in the clubs, the sale of food and beverages, licensing plans, etc.

Keep it up, everybody who called and emailed the Council. With any luck, we may see scenes like this one at rooftop cafés all over town by next Valentine's Day.

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Stop Digging, Mr. Mendelson!

On January 4 the DC City Council, in a notorious cave-in to Mayor Bowser, quickly reversed its decision to end the ban on the smoking of marijuana in public in public establishments, setting the stage for the emergence of underground "smokeasies" for people unable to smoke in their own homes, such as poor tenants in Section 8 housing, or regular apartment tenants restricted by rental agreements.

DCMJ.org posted on January 5:

The January 4th Legislative Meeting of the DC Council was a rollercoaster. First the DC Council voted to #LetTheBanExpire, then the Mayor called members of the DC Council and told them to have a revote on the ban, and after the second vote the DC Council renewed the ban on social cannabis use…

Sounds like we lost, but we didn’t. Here’s why: the DC Council is going to amend the ban before it becomes permanent law. We believe the amended version will be less broad and carve out exceptions for adult use outside of private residences. In the meantime, nothing changes- the ban from 2015 is in place for at least 90 more days, but we now have the opportunity to fix the law before it becomes permanent, but we need everyone to step up their efforts and lobby the DC Council about the need to #AmendTheBan.

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#DCBlizzard

I rather like the shoveling -- repetitive, relaxing, meditative. Big ol' mug of coffee, smoke a bowl, suit up, stomp on out there and just kinda get into it. Some of my neighbors are out shoveling, too, so everybody's taking a break and hanging out. Round 2 begins soon -- or soonish, seeing as it's 8:30 on Sunday morning as I write this.



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Free Gifts With Every Fill-Up

If you managed to tear yourself away from the US media's 24/7 election shitshow for ten or fifteen minutes in the past month, you may have noticed that one of the biggest stories of the past month or two has been the reports of the Erdogan regime buying smuggled black-market oil from ISIS.

That's Turkey, ostensibly our ally, buying oil from ISIS, ostensibly our enemy. Just so we're straight on that.

And by the way, you know the current oil price slump is really hitting hard when even ISIS has to start offering free giveaway goodies with every fill-up.

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